According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans aged 65 years or older. Most of them have been experiencing episodes of depression throughout their lives. For others, depression has a first onset in late life—even persons in their 80s and 90s. However, those numbers—as...

In her informative yet entertaining book, “Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself,” Anneli Rufus tells this story: Accepting his third annual Teacher of the Year award, Jeremy gazed out at an auditorium packed with wildly applauding children, parents, and colleagues. Silently he mourned. I was supposed to get my doctorate. I should be famous by...

Should someone with a mood disorder disclose her condition to her manager or anyone with whom she works? After more than twenty years in the professional world, having worked a variety of occupations in different kinds of settings, I still don’t know the answer to that. I experienced thick stigma and shame when I disclosed...

I’m hanging out on some rough terrain between conventional and alternative medicine, not sure if dabbling in both simultaneously is allowed. I can feel the tension between them as real as I did between my parents during their hostile divorce when I was 11. Traditional medicine says that we just don’t have a lot of...

Research led by Swiss neuroscientist Pascal Vrticka and his US colleagues at Stanford University has found that, among other things, humor plays a key role in psychological health. According to the study, recently published in the journal “Nature Reviews Neuroscience,” adults with psychological disorders such as autism or depression often have a modified humor processing...